Feb 25, 2008

LB Resorts to Shooting Resorts

The Legislature is proposing to legalize and allow hotel resorts to house shooting ranges for international events that could rake in millions of dollars of added income to the dwindling CNMI economy. Reports said the bill would "diversify" the tourists that visit the islands.

I totally have no idea how much shooting resorts are earning in the world, however, it seems that the Legislature deems it to be one of the income generating attractions in some parts of the world.

The problem is private ownership of guns here. Do we really have that many people hunting? Hunting what? There's simply no reason to have guns here. If you need personal protection, get mace or a taser.

And if you want to fire off a weapon.. well there you go.. you can go to a resort and pop a few off.

.. And the legalization of marijuana is long long overdue. It is kept illegal, simply to prop up an infrastructure of drug enforcement that depends annually on dollars. Those dollars would be better spent elsewhere (community centers, after-school programs, parks and recreation, schools, etc.)

legalizing pot would be horrible. i mean, one day health nuts are going to demand filters on your splif. oh, and then there'll be the issue of secondhand highs.

and the taxes...

with all of the growing we'll have on saipan the government will have to open a brand new division of the treasury department. call it the high.r.s.

at least farming will have a renaissance in the cnmi. imagine the ganjalu market on saturday mornings in susupe...

we should also change the background of the cnmi flag from blue to green...and make it out of hemp.

you know, to represent.

bad idea. bad, bad idea.

the only good thing to come out of legalizing pot would be all of the funny brand names and commercials that would come out of it.

try to picture this 1940's style ad playing on power 99...

(*grungy actor reading fake testimonial)"after a hard day of strumming my guitar for donations at the bus stop and smelling like pee, there's nothing that hits the spot like lighting up a karmastick. " (*insert cheesy voiceover)ah, yes. karmastick, the only brand that guarantees you'll become one with everything without having to do anything. karmasticks are available in mellow, sooo smooth, and like wow man. remember, when the man is keeping you down, reach for karmasticks. but not if it's like out of your way or anything. it's cool, man. whatever..."

actually, 97.9 the rock would probably make a resurgence should hippie lettuce be legalized...something about the breakfast with the beatles or something

You can't keep alcohol legal and justify keeping mj illegal. I've never seen anyone smoke mary and start a fight, abuse their wife or beat a child.. happens all the time with alcohol. It's nonsense that is based on perpetuating obsolete information for the purpose of propping up the anti-drug infrastructure. Period. That is the only sense I can make of it. Alcohol is by far, more dangerous a substance than mj. By far.

There was a time when two or three tourist available shooting ranges were doing well here on Saipan. Now it is down to just one that I know of that is still operational.

Allow recreational/sport shooting? Sure, why not? Charging huge fees/licensing payments/kickbacks (whatever you want to call it)? Why? Just let those people, (if anyone), willing to start such a biz get on with it, tax them like anyone else with a business.

This mantra of government carving huge chunks off the top of new start ups really needs to stop if we are ever going to get new entrepreneurs to come here and generate jobs and actually produce something.

Guns are already legal and all over the place illegally. This is one place where a ban on guns can really mean something. It is easy to control the ports and remove all current guns (over time) that are in the community.

Guns solely at resorts can easily be monitored. I think "gun resort" is a loaded term. A resort where shooting, targeting, skeet shooting, as well as, other regular resort activities wouldn't hurt a soul.

And certainly you would have to strictly limit the location of the resorts, as with gun ranges.

gun resorts??? we just solved the fireworks issues and now we have skeet shooting going on around resorts.. more noise pollution...hell, don't stop at gun resorts.. have m1a1 tank rentals.. or get to fly shotgun with one of the f15 pilots taking out FDM... why stop short of gun resorts.. I can't believe the idiotic ideas some legislators come up with..

Lil, as I stated before, the guns and rifles will end up stolen or somehow will end up missing. It has happened in the past and WILL happen again. Again, our government will regulate the guns at the resorts just about as good as they regulate poker in our villages. In other words, guns will end up in the hands of thugs.

This I can GUARANTEE. History has a way of repeating itself.

I will publicly lobby against these gun resorts and will bring up past incidents. We have a peaceful, gun-free island. Shouldn't we keep it this way? Remember, if one gun ends up in the wrongs hands, the results could be DEADLY.

Ed..gun free island? We are far from it. There are tons of legal and illegal weapons here.

I think we should be gun free, and I think we could easily manage this.

But, we are not. You can go and get a 22 rifle if you want. They sell them at Joeten and Fishing Tackle.

I'd rather see this a gun free place as well. Having said that, I don't think having some resorts that allow target shooting will be anything that is difficult to manage.

Brad.. cannabis is not what is causing gang violence in LA. In fact, prohibition is evidence that the banning of substances grows gangs and gang violence. If substances weren't illegal, the price wouldn't be so high and thus there wouldn't be any profit in selling it. Again, this is evidenced during the era of prohibition. In fact, this is where some of america's biggest criminal organizations got their start.. selling illegal booze.

Lil, you forgot my name...just kidding. While I smoked marijuana in high school, it certainly didn't do any good for me. I quit shortly after because while it did make me laugh a hell of a lot and it made me happy, it also made me very unproductive.

Lil, again, please understand that gun resorts cannot be regulated by our government. Please look into the success stories of our government regulating poker in the CNMI. We don't need more guns. we need less guns.

As far as buying a 22 caliber rifle, you have to get a license to get the gun. I've shot 22 rifles. It's a lot different than shooting a semi-automatic assault rifle that was created to KILL. A 22 can kill, but not at the rate or capacity of an assault rifle.

Yes, illegal guns are here in the CNMI. There are also legal guns that were stolen and are now in illegal hands. Do we want to put ASSAULT RIFLES into illegal hands? I think not.

I will fight any impending legislation that tries to bring in gun resorts to Saipan.

You'd be suprised to find that the .22 caliber has killed more people and animals than all other personal firearm calibers combined.* The 22 is deadly and the 22 is all over the place here. I'm sure you know several people who have legal 22s and I'm sure several people you know have illegal 22s (or other firearms).

From Wikipedia (not really an official site for knowledge, but it'll pass for this i hope):

Sweden: Cannabis is not seen as a soft drug. Zero tolerance is the official policy. Possession and consumption is illegal.

Switzerland: Cannabis is classified as an illegal narcotic in Switzerland.[44] The production, possession, consumption and sale of illegal narcotics, even for personal use, is punishable by a monetary penalty or by imprisonment of up until three years, as are public incitements to the consumption of illegal narcotics.

Portugal: Personal consumption in the amount of 3 days' worth without contravening the law. Cultivation, even if for personal use is still totally illegal and cultivation of even one plant is assumed to indicate involvement with trafficking. Possession of seeds is also illegal.

Belgium: Individual use by adults has the lowest priority to police and government instances, if the doesn't cause any problems to his environment.

Czech Republic: 1998 law when the "possession of more than a small amount of drugs" (for marijuana possession of less than about 20 grams was not a crime but the owner could be fined)became criminal offense again. Consumption was not punishable.

Ireland: Under Irish Law a Schedule 1 drug (SCHEDULE I - cannabis, LSD, mescaline, opium), such as cannabis, is a drug which is highly abusable with no medicinal value.

Spain: Personal consumption and home cultivation of cannabis have been decriminalized, but buying or selling remains a criminal offense.

basically, everyone has a different take on pot. mine is that it's ass nasty and shouldn't be legalized.

perhaps the bill on gun resorts is backed by heavy research with collaboration of tourism agency here that could've reported that most tourists are shooters and are looking for shooting ranges for tournaments?

More and more countries are decriminalizing marijuana for personal or medical use every year. And many of those that haven't either have legislation pending or cast a blind eye to it. Australia, Canada, Belgium, etc. and many US states now. It is only a matter of time before the majority of the world and probably the US has decriminilized it for personal and/or medical use.

I just don't get the whole alcohol should be legal and marijuana shouldn't. If you grew up around both, you know alcohol is a much more dangerous substance.

We make determinations on alot of substances individually - acitominaphen, msg, tobacco, salt, alcohol, transfats, phenphen, lead, etc. etc. Why doesn't this apply here? We have the ability to look at individual substances and make educated decisions. The "what would be next" argument is also used against legalizing gay marriage. It's an argument that assumes from the get go, that we are not intelligent enough to look at individual cases fairly.

McDonald's would have to open up several more restaurants if mj is legalized. Everyone with the munchies all of the time.

Hey! There you go.. a way to get rid of all the poker places. If you legalize mj, McDonalds will open up all over the island.. they would buy up all of the poker establishment spaces. You know, everyone will need quick easy access to bigmacs and mcnuggets.

I love the idea of a gun resort because it will be the right step toward legalising guns. All of us should have the right to carry guns cuz if we all have guns we can shoot people breaking into our house like in Texas and maybe that will bring crime down and act as a deterant and we can feel safe again eh?